The Precarious Position of Anti-poverty Programs

There
are a deluge of budget proposals and compromises that Congress is
trying to quickly wade through as the August 2nd
date for default on our federal debt draws near. On one side, House
Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling without a deal to cut
spending, and have rhetorically reduced budget cuts to a dichotomy of
prosperity or decline. They insist on no new revenues and
social-program sacrifices to get our country back on track
financially. On other hand, there are a congeries of Democratic
voices that suggest everything from cutting entitlement programs to
agreeing to $1.2 trillion in cuts to discretionary spending. Combine
the steadfastness of the House Republicans and the compromising
approach of Democrats together and add a touch of debt-ceiling
pressure, and the result is a frustrated public and no deal to speak
of.

But
aside from the big numbers being talked about, from House Speaker
John Boehner's $1.8 trillion in savings from entitlement programs to
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's proposed cap on
discretionary spending, there is a more human element of these
debates that has been lost amongst big talk of an impending debt
crisis and the country we will leave future generations. Indeed, the
various rounds of debates and cuts have left anti-poverty programs
woefully exposed and vulnerable.

In
the past, programs such as Medicare and Social Security have been
protected from cuts because so many Americans rely on these benefits.
But so far every proposed budget besides that of Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid cuts these programs in one way or another. For
example, when talking about Medicaid, Representative Ryan repeatedly
attacks what he terms the one-size-fits-all approach of the current
system, and advocates turning Medicaid into block grants that allow
the states more flexibility in providing service to those who need it
most. Sounds good, right? State flexibility is great, and helping
those in need is, after all, the goal of the program.

But
the reality of it is, converting Medicaid into block grants would
shift more of the cost to states leading to restricted enrollments
and benefits in times of economic downturn. According to a study
conducted by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured the proposed structural
changes to Medicaid would result in at least 31 million people losing
coverage over the next decade. Medicaid is a program that provides
health and medical services to low-income or disabled Americans.
Somehow Rep. Ryan's rhetoric of making sure that “patients are
[not] left with fewer options and lower-quality care” is
incompatible with the consequences of his proposal. The same goes for
his proposal to turn the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP) into block grants; it reduces the benefits available to
Americans and fundamentally undermines the come-one-come-all nature
of these programs.

Also
troubling are the proposals to cut discretionary spending. President
Obama admitted in a speech he delivered in April that cutting
discretionary spending will not solve the problem – it's only a
third of federal spending anyway. But that has not stopped him from
suggesting around $600
billion in savings from
non-security discretionary spending (things like transportation,
education, foreign assistance) .
And it gets worse from there – Rep. Ryan wants to reduce
non-security discretionary spending to below 2008 levels, and
both Rep. Boehner and Sen. Reid have proposed $1.2 trillion in
discretionary savings.

Why is this
bad?

Across-the-board
cuts to non-security discretionary spending seriously threaten
community health centers, child care, Head Start, Pell grants, and
foreign aid, to name a few.
Such cuts also affect many federal agencies that provide grants to
our communities, for everything from highway construction to waterway
maintenance to community development to crime prevention.

Let's focus for a
second on international affairs, which occupies a little over one
percent of the federal budget, or 3% of discretionary spending. About
a third of this small fraction of spending goes towards development
aid (rather than military aid). House appropriators are currently
working with the numbers in Rep. Ryan's budget plan, allocating what
program or agency gets how much, within each subcommittee. According
to this budget blueprint,
foreign aid has about half of what it had last year,
which is bad news for the world's poor. (Meanwhile, military
spending is relatively stable in both the President and Rep. Ryan's
plans.)

According to the
amfAR Foundation for AIDS Research, if the House Budget
Resolution funding levels are implemented, the
impact from cuts to U.S. bilateral programs could include:

47,410 more
infants infected with HIV

551,918
orphans and vulnerable children losing their food, education, and
livelihood assistance through PEPFAR

Funding for
AIDS treatment for 654,254 people being eliminated

The human impact
of potential cuts to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria
could include:

2.5 million
fewer malaria treatments

174,000
people losing their antiretroviral medications to treat AIDS

The human impact
of potential cuts to Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisations
(GAVI) could include:

2.07 million
fewer pentavalent vaccines available for children globally (the
vaccine protects against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, Haemophilus
influenzae type B, and hepatitis B)

In other words, all cuts are not equal, and
the impact of budget cuts can be huge and disproportionate if it
isn't carefully done. And with this race to a compromise (or race to
cut more), there are some definite losers – like the poor, both
domestic and international.

Although House Republicans appear to have
formed an impenetrable block when it comes to their position on debt
(evidence: All but four House Republicans and no Democrats voted for
Rep. Ryan's budget resolution), protecting anti-poverty programs
ultimately is not a partisan thing. The rhetoric of both parties
suggests that protecting Americans is important, and yet the frenzy
of ideology on one side and try-anything-ness on the other that has
permeated Washington has left the cry of “don't balance the budget
on the backs of the poor” out of the proposed budgets themselves.

Everyone is
worried about the debt ceiling crisis causing a possible default
brought on by the game of political chicken being played by the
people we elected to run our country. But once it is resolved one way
or another and this budget season winds down, we may see the mark of
these big cuts on our communities. The federal budget is, after all,
a reflection of our national priorities. And with focus fixed on
spending cuts (as a catch-all term, without looking at the
ramifications of this), we may very well find that, as Marian Wright
Edelman, president and founder of the Children's Defense Fund
recently remarked, “there are some cuts that do not heal.”